Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The New Daughter- review


The New Daughter is an obscure horror story from 2009.  It features some good acting and is a genuinely creepy story.  It’s a tale that is somewhat Lovecraftian in nature and leave audiences with a freaky ambiguous ending.  The film is eerie, subtle, and very underrated.

John James, played by Kevin Costner, is a recently divorced writer who moves into a country house with his teenage daughter Louisa, played by Ivana Baquero, and his young son, Sam.   It turns out that the land has a large burial mound on it.  Louisa has a fascination with the mound and eventually she becomes possessed by an evil spirit within the mound.  John is now having to fight to figure out what is wrong with his daughter and if he can save her.

Kevin Costner brings a very real and vulnerable character to this film.  He shows that he has range for all sorts of various roles.  Ivana Baquero shows that she has not just hit her peak with Pan’s Labyrinth.  As Louisa she plays a troubled teen that has basically two personalities in flux. 

The story is very dark and mysterious.  There are eldritch forces in this story and it works in a H.P. Lovecraft fashion.  The ending is left up to the audience whether it’s a positive or negative.  It’s a clever tale of sinister forces and the people that interact with them. 

This movie is certainly worth checking out.  It’s dark and it doesn’t rely on gore but on eerie suspense.  It seems more like a modern pulp magazine story brought to the screen.  I recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of the horror genre or anyone who is looking for something different. 

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